NOTE: Due to the delay in uploading last week's features, they will remain highlighted through MONDAY 20 SEPTEMBER 2004 when we will resume our regular posting schedule.

ORIGINAL POST: Monday, August 30, 2004 BY: Eduardo Navas

Report on Centro + Media, Mexico City: second installment in a series of five.

EXCERPT:Centro+Media was a special event organized to inaugurate Centro, a brand new art and design center in Mexico City, focusing on Design, TV and film. The curators of the event were Arcangel Constantini and Ivan Abreu. The exhibition was up for August 19 - 22. It included online and offline installations, graphic prints presented on elegant lightboxes throughout three floors of the building, experimental videos that were screened continually on eight LCD screens, live sound performances, and an online webpage battle. For a full list of artists, please look at the first installment published on Tuesday, August 24, 2004, as I will not be able to comment on much of the material, this way at least you will learn who participated in the exhibition.

The opening of the event happened on Thursday the 19th. The Press covered the opening of the Design school really well. On Wednesday (the day before) there was a press conference where journalists had the oportunity to ask specific questions to the curators and administrators. The journalists also looked at the installations that were already up, and asked the artists a few questions about their art projects. During the opening on Thursday, there were TV cameras going around filming art projects and interviewing the organizers and artists; and on Saturday there was a review in the Universal, one of the major newspapers in Mexico City. There were two other events that happened in conjunction with the Centro+Media exhibition, one at Centro de Arte Alameda and the other at the Rufino Tamayo Museum. I will write about these events in the days to come. This time I will focus on the opening event.

Notes from "The New World" -- Do you know what a Metaverse Construction Set is? You do if you are a resident of Second Life an online digital world, "built, shaped, and owned by its participants." This paid service invites users to, "create a shared reality in a world full of people, activities, adventure, and fun." The game space allows for live scripting and sits on over 100 servers, with, as they state, "new land added almost daily." Participants have extraordinary control over the development of their avatar and the types of activities it can participate in and people it can interact with. There is no seeming division between the conceptual boundaries of "reality" and "fantasy" within this world: Polar bears can run coffee houses; Pirates can teach kindergarten; I (cleverly disguised as a game show host) could host a game show! Both the inhabitants and environment are built by the interaction, or avoidance, of the residents.

But all is not blissful in the new world. Recent features on old world news have reported that the a civil war has erupted between a tribe of utopia builders and a troop of war re-enactors, who broke through the digital divide which had been protecting each world from the agendas of the others. This and other news can more accurately be found on New World news sources such as Wagner James Au's "first-hand" reports blog.

Its a sad affair when artists lose a resource due to lack of financial support or recognition and even sadder when we at netartreview are there to announce it.

Mez and Martin announced on the list _arc.hive_ this morning that as of August 30th the list would be shut down by its providers Virtual Artists, an Australian internet company, due to lack of money and the inability to manage a seemingly valueless service.

The list has been providing hierarchically-dependant "net.wurks", as Mez would term them, since November 2001 with regular contributions from artists such as Mez, Alan Sondheim, + lo_y. +, Lewis LaCook, August Highland, Florian Cramer, Peter von Brandenburg and A Dontigny.

If you are concerned about the loss of this resource email the list by subscribing through the link proved above and hopefully we will see this list appear in another shape or form on another server.